Abaniquillo Costero Maya

Descrizione

The brown anole (Anolis sagrei), also known commonly as the Cuban brown anole, Bahaman anole, or De la Sagra's anole, is a species of lizard in the family Dactyloidae. The species is native to Cuba, the Bahamas, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac, Jamaica, the Swan Islands, the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize and the Caribbean coast of Guatemala and Honduras. It has been widely introduced elsewhere, via the importation and exportation of plants where the anole would lay eggs in the soil of the pots, and is now found in Florida and other regions of the United States including southern Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Southern California. It has also been introduced to other Caribbean islands, Mexico, Singapore, and Taiwan. This species is highly invasive. They are also much more wary of humans than most other Anole species. In its introduced range, it reaches exceptionally high population densities, is capable of expanding its range very quickly, and both outcompetes and consumes many species of native lizards, like the green anole. The brown anole's introduction into the United States in the early 1970s has altered the behavior and negatively affected populations of the native Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis, also known as the green anole), which have since generally been relegated to the treetops.